[Lexicog] Re: Using older dictionaries

Michael everson at EVERTYPE.COM
Wed Dec 23 00:48:10 UTC 2009


--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, billposer at ... wrote:

> A problem with working from older dictionaries that I am surprised
> that no one has mentioned is that if one follows the order of entries
> in the older dictionary, from a topical point of view you will be
> skipping around all over the place (unless its a topical dictionary).

Aren't most dictionaries organized in alphabetical order?

I would have imagined that most speakers of Carrier had encountered English or French dictionaries and would have some sort of expectation of alphabetical order.

This is of some interest to me in terms of character encoding. Currently I am working on some West African syllabaries, none of which have much to offer in terms of rational sorting order. Vai is a bit of an exception, because it has a certain order and indeed runs of similar glyphs within the ordering which would help users to find things. (Remembering alphabetical order is easy with 30 characters; syllabaries are much bigger. 

But perhaps this isn't on topic any longer.



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